Guthumba

A Drinking Man’s Reflection

It should be understood that there
are things a man must do,
ways in which he must insulate,
from each of the quiet partings,
from the stretchingly empty night.

There are anodynes for each of us,
the ways in which we erase ourselves.

For some, women offer moments,
shelters of temporary warmth,
a womb-like security
granted in a vague exchange
—for some prospect of understanding
for some broken lessening—while others
sleep alone, satisfied,
full of themselves within themselves.

At the time, I did not believe my father,
shook my head as he told me
that a man is most pure on his own,
when left to the sound of his breathing,
whetted with drink and shadow.

At the time I did not understand his silence,
or his longing for my sleeping mother.



Scotch

Three ice cubes shift,
clinking against glass,
slipping into swirls
as he leans
back, rubs his
eyes, breathes deeply.

He lifts the drink to
light, examines the contents,
admires the translucent Lethe.
He releases the breath,
expels the thoughts.
A swallow for each memory.

There is always ample supply
to meet the need,
to quiet
the echoes,
the images of time:
to erase and enlighten.

There is clinking again as the ice
settles, diminishes to a final sip,
removing all traces
of what he came to remember.



A Bowhunter’s Daydream

He stands, three fingers clenched, pulling with the heel,
with forearm bulges holding the frame.
The tensions of the muscle—a struggling heat,
a fury—transferred to the bolt, through the hand
tucked against cheek, through the fingers
and knuckles gone white. His sight stretches along the shaft
and trains itself on that uncommon point, that space ahead.
He empties his lungs and the air settles around him,
his eyelids drawing together in the calm, melded with pulses of blood.
He is a golem, inanimate, a statue fixed while the fingers
release and hang limp by the corner of his mouth.
The string straightens itself with vibration.

He is carried through the body, into the propelled:
that broadheaded missile.
It splits the wind with an aluminum hum and follows
the trajectory, his eye, all screaming to the heart-lung.

He is a single rigidity, hewn or welded, set in flight,
in some wanton pursuit, whetted as he opens his mouth,
as he bares his teeth and bites down.
They spread the life and body, tearing through heat, motion,
the living wetness of a warm beating cavity.

He is imbedded, spent.


The deer’s muscles tighten as it thrashes,
it’s eyes glossed over—a thin film of fear.
It will run beyond it’s ability, faster than it is capable,
before collapsing in mid-stride, pushing antlers into the moist earth.
And then it will sleep, as it fell, blanketed by dew,
while silence slowly blinks across its face.